"Filled with country memories, bluesy regret, familiar and piercing sentiment, the new album sounds like quintessential Neil Young, which, depending on your home catalog, will be either an enormous turn-on or turn-off."

So says Manohla Dargis about the new Neil Young disc in today's Times review of Jonathan Demme's Neil Young: Heart of Gold, which I'm hoping to see booked at the Nickelodeon (check out their gorgeous new website, by the way.) It got my vote anyway, for what that's worth.

Personally, though, I don't much care for the new record Prairie Wind, which I don't think of as all that quintessential. I gave it a good test drive, but nothing in it really stuck, and I think a lot of the acclaim may be sentimental; it's Young's near-death record, as Time Out of Mind -- in which Neil Young appears as a character, by the way -- was for Bob Dylan, just not as rich or as elegant or as deep.

Nonetheless I'm looking forward to the movie.